Many types of content resources are available. Examples include news, entertainment, and business content, advertising, movies, sportscasts, legal databases, medical journals, weather forecasts, and restaurant menus.
Effective management of content resources is important in the Internet economy. Numerous models exist for generating revenue in connection with the content resources, including advertising. The more specifically targeted advertising is, the more value the advertising has, and, therefore, the more money is generated per advertising unit. In at least some current models for targeting advertising, the content provider site is used as the basis for determining the characteristics of advertising based on the content being retrieved. For example, if a user is viewing a cooking program, it may seem reasonable to advertise cookware and kitchen goods. However, this type of model relies on an inference that the use of a particular type of content implies interest in advertising relating to that particular type of content. Thus, for example, if a user is watching a NASCAR race, it might be inferred that the user is interested in buying sports cars, when in fact a 64-color crayon set might be more appropriate because the user is actually a child admiring the colors on the cars.
Another model for generating revenue from content resources is content provided for a fee. Pay-to-View (onetime charges) and premium channels (fixed recurring charges) rely on models in which the consumer pays directly for content. However, in the case of a onetime charge, it may be difficult to find consumers willing to pay for the content, primarily because they probably are not aware that the content may be provided from this resource. In the case of fixed recurring charges, the challenge is making the content available when the user wants to enjoy it.
The ability to easily introduce new content into a delivery infrastructure can be helpful to achieving effective content resource management. Currently, a content resource (e.g., CNN, Wall Street Journal, or PC Backup content) is hard coded into an HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) page. On those occasions when it is necessary to rewrite the HTML text each time a new piece of content is added, the effort required to incorporate all possible combinations of available content will be beyond the abilities and resources of substantially all providers.
An Internet portal is a Web page (or set of Web pages) providing a one stop browsing service to the system user. The value of an Internet portal solution can be measured in terms of the branding of the portal and the advertising that is provided through the portal. However, it can be challenging to attempt to ensure that the advertising is seen and to gauge the size of the audience. One way to help make sure that the portal is used is by configuring the portal as a captive portal, which provides access to various content resources through the portal, but also prevents or restricts access to the network through any interface other than the portal. Captive portals not only help ensure that the user sees the branding of, and advertising on, the portal, but also allow for better monitoring and for more effective generation of charges for user access to premium content resources. A challenge in the case of a captive portal is to help the portal to scale to support not only a large number of system users, but also high bandwidth applications.
An approach known as Remote Authentication Dial-in User Service (RADIUS) has been proposed as a method for provisioning system user configuration and administration for rudimentary Internet Protocol (IP) communications. RADIUS servers rely on a flat file system that requires complex configuration tools to handle advanced configuration, profile assignment, or relationship maintenance.